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While the five-star characters might be the main reason you started playingHonkai: Star Rail, you’ll still be using four-star characters most of the time if you’re a free-to-play or low-spending player. You can get a four-star every ten pulls on any banner, and there’s a high chance for it to be a character.
you may also get multiple four-star characters like Dan Heng, March 7th, Natasha, and Asta simply by progressing the main story. Even though each character has a different role in the team based on their path, they can all be ranked into different tiers based on their overall value.
Updated on July 16, 2025, by Sanyam Jain:Ever since the start of the Trailblazer’s revisit to the Xianzhou Luofu for the Wardance, Moze has been one of the most popular characters due to his mysterious personality and phenomenal animations. Unfortunately, the playable part of this character might not be quite as good.
Basis Of This Tier List
If you go to a character’s information screen when you’re already past the Belebog story in the game,you’ll see that many things can affect their overall value. One of the most important parts of a character’s kit is their Traces:
Basic Attack
These attacks can be used during the battle and if you’re roaming freely. Attacking an enemy with a basic attack in the open world will start the battle andinflict Weakness on them if you attack with one of the required combat types.
On the other hand, the basic attacks of every characterdeal the same amount of damage during combatunless they’re enhanced by other sources.
Skill
This is a special ability given to every character thatconsumes one skill point upon use, with some exceptions. You start every battle with three skill points, andyou can gain one each time you perform an attack with any character.
The skill points are cumulative for the entire team, which allows you to mix and match.
Ultimate
After getting enoughenergy by using your Basic Attack, Skill, or taking damage, you’ll be able to use your Ultimate. This ability is strong enough to turn the odds in your favor if used correctly.
Technique
This replaces your Skill button when you’re in the open world. Use it to get an advantage over your opponents in battle.The advantage provided is different for each character, and you can only use a set number of Techniques before you recharge.
Unlike your characters' health,you may’t regenerate your Technique numbers at Space Anchors. To do that, you’ll have to break some special purple items in the world.
Talent
There are a total of four passives that every character can get after being ascended, and theTalent is the main passive that brings all the abilities togetherand forms the character.
Other than the Traces, each character can have their character level, Light Cone level, and Relic type and level.All of these heavily impact the effectiveness of the character, but the game gives you the freedom to choose them. Because of this, the tier list will attempt to base characters off their Traces only.
Moreover, a particular character can be stronger against certain enemies because of their element and path. For example,characters belonging toThe Hunt Pathwill always be better against boss enemies, while Erudition characters perform better against a group of smaller enemies.
This tier list will assume that every character isput in a scenario that’s best for them according to their path and element.
This will make it easier to bring them on the same page while ranking them.
S-Tier Four-Star Characters
Characters belonging to this tier have quite a synergistic set of abilities,and you can never go wrong with upgrading these characters. EXP resources are quite scarce for F2P players at the start of the game, which makes it essential to focus only on a few characters instead of upgrading them all a little bit.
These characters can even perform well against some five-stars in certain scenarios:
Reason
Gallagher
Sustainers are the most valuable type of characters in Honkai: Star Rail, which already gives Gallagher some free points. While this character wasn’t as viable on release, thegame has massively pushed the Break-based builds into the meta.
This makes Gallagher one of the strongest sustainer to upgrade currently,even competing with five-star sustainersif you havecharacters like Fireflyor Boothill.
Hanya
Skill Points are one of the most important mechanics in the combat of Honkai: Star Rail, and it can be difficult to maintain them, especiallyif you’re using characters like Imbibitor Lunae or Argentithat’d use a Skill Point every time they get a turn.
Hanya not only gives your party some extra SP, but alsoincreases the DMG, ATK, and SPD of your DPS character. The DMG boost is essentially permanent since you just have to apply the Burden on the respective enemy.
March 7th (Preservation)
The first character that you unlock in the game, March 7th is decent at shielding one character,which is extremely important for endgame contentunless you have Gepard. She also has a chance of Freezing the enemies, which forces them to skip a turn.
Natasha
Another character that unlocks for free through the main story,Natasha is one of the few healers in the game. This makes her extremely valuable at the start of the game since you’ll struggle to keep your characters alive.
Moreover, she gets amazing passives after being ascended, which allows her to remove debuffs from her allies. She also makes the enemies deal less damage at the start of battle if her technique is used.
Tingyun
Tingyun is a Harmony character that massivelybuffs other party members' damage from her Skill and Ultimateapart from dealing extra turret damage with their attacks. This already makes her good with a DPS.
Moreover, she’s one of the few characters that get extra basic attack DMG buffed from two of her passives and gets her SPD increased as well.
Sushang
This character can repeatedly advance her turns and deal massive damage to the enemies.Her damage numbers can be higher than most characters in the game, and the Skill Point gained from Eidolon One makes her one of the best four-star DPS.
Lynx
Lynx is the second four-star Abundance character alongside Natasha, and she does almost everything better. She canconstantly heal your characters when they get a turn and cleanse your entire teamwith her Ultimate.
A-Tier Four-Star Characters
Heading into the A-Tier, these characters are still great to have in your team, but they might not perform well in every single scenario.They’ll still give you a lot of value and are worth upgrading, but they’re just a little more situational.
March 7th (The Hunt)
The Hunt March 7th has Imaginary as a combat type, but the best part about her kit is theability to use any other combat type by applying the Shifu effecton the respective ally, which makes her a great ally in a break-based team.
Unfortunately, she might not be the best character to use in a normal DPS team since you have many sub-DPS options that perform a lot better.
Xueyi
Xueyi is a four-star Destruction character who candamage an enemy’s Toughness bar even if they don’t have the required weaknessthrough her Ultimate. She also launches a follow-up attack once your party reduces an enemy’s Toughness a few times.
While her kit is unique, Xueyi isn’t an S-tier charactersince her overall damage is quite low. However, you may build her in multiple ways, which is always fun.
Guinaifen
Apart from being a great support for Kafka and a phenomenal DoT-based character, Guinaifen is particularly great because of her Firekiss effect. This effectincreases the DMG dealt to the enemy by all sources.
You can get over 25 percent DMG boost with this effect, and itpermanently stays on the enemyas long as you can keep triggering Burn on them.
Dan Heng
Dan Heng is one of the first characters thatyou unlock for free soon after the Trailblazer wakes up. He belongs to The Hunt Path and deals phenomenal single-target damage with both his Skill and Ultimate.
He is also quite a self-sustaining character since he canreduce the chances of being attacked on low health, decrease the enemy’s SPD, and increase his own SPD.
Serval
Serval is given to every player for free through the pre-registration rewards.Apart from possessing great multi-target Lightning DMG, Serval can keep enemies in a shocked state almost all the time through her Technique and other abilities.
If you have Kafka on your account, you canpair her with Serval and she can even go up to the S tier.
Asta
Asta is a Harmony character who can provide massive ATK and SPD boosts to your team if used correctly. The latter is one of the sought-after stat in the gamewhile the former is great for all DPS teams, especially the ones based on DoT.
Pela
Pela has some powerful abilities that can remove enemy buffs and debuff them.She can reduce the DEF of all enemies at the same time, and the Ice Weakness Break from her can be great in the current meta since there aren’t many Ice characters.
Yukong
Yukong is a special Harmony character as she can buff your party members' ATK, Crit Rate, and Crit DMG. The only problem is that thisbuff only applies to the next two characters taking turns after her, which requires a lot of planning.
Hook
There aren’t a lot of viable Fire DPS characters in the game, and Hook candeal a ton of DMG while being self-sustaining with her Traces, especially if you use a healing Destruction Light Cone on her.
B-Tier Four-Star Characters
If a character is in this tier, you might want to think again if you want to upgrade them. They can be good in specific scenarios,but you’ll have to put in a lot of resources to get value out of them.
Moze
Moze was first released alongside Feixiao, and he’s essentially a support character for her since he can increase acharacter’s follow-up damage and provide some other buffs. However, there are quite a lot of better options for this role.
Themain thing holding Moze back is his damageeven after being fully built. However, he becomes quite a decent support once you get his second Eidolon.
Misha
Misha’s kit is quite similar to that of Jing Yuan where his Skill feeds into the Hits Per Action for his Ultimate, andyou’d want to deal as many instances of damageas possible with this ability.
Unfortunately, his overall damage isn’t high enough to be considered a DPS andhis supporting abilities aren’t that good either.
Qingque
Qingque has a lot of Gacha involved in her Skills, but she got a better position as the game progressed further since many characters canregain these Skill Points now. She can deal some big damage if you get lucky as well.
Sampo
Sampo was great during the early game, but he slowly lost value due to the lackluster nature of DoT. Although,he can be A or even S tier if you have Kafka on your accountsince she makes DoT much better.
Luka
Luka is the perfect blend between a damage-dealing and DoT character since hisDoT can deal damage based on the enemy’s max health. Unfortunately, the ATK cap in this DoT is a little too strict. Once again, he can still be great if paired with Kafka.
C-Tier Four-Star Characters
Characters in C-Tier are the weakest in the game and it’s usually not a good idea to invest in them. Once again,you’re able to get value out of them and they’re still viable, it just takes too much to do that.
Herta
Soon after Honkai: Star Rail’s release, Herta quickly went to the bottom of the barrel due to lack of overall damage and utility. However, shecame back into the meta ever since the release of the Pure Fictiongame mode.
While she’s one of the best characters to use here,Herta remains largely weak outside of it.
Arlan
Arlan is one of the characters that could definitely be better when the game’s meta shakes up, buthe suffers from a lack of self-sustenance at the moment.
